Many automatic picking machines include parallel rows of storage racks, each rack having storage surfaces on storage shelves arranged horizontally, wherein a lane is formed between the first and second rows of storage racks and between the third and fourth rows of storage racks. Each lane has a plurality of storage and retrieval machines that can travel along the lanes for storing pharmaceutical drug packages in storage sites on the storage shelves and for removing said pharmaceutical drug packages from the storage shelves. A plurality of conveyor belts extends over the entire area of the rows of racks between the second and third rows of storage racks. A plurality of reach-through windows and chutes are arranged in the second and third rows of storage racks and distributed over the length of the rows, such that the storage and retrieval machines moving in the lanes can dispense the pharmaceutical drug packages through the windows onto the chutes so that each pharmaceutical drug package thereby dispensed can reach one of the conveyor belts.
The conveyor belts transport these pharmaceutical drug packages to a front side of the four rows of shelves and further to a dispensing apparatus having a plurality of chutes, each of which enables the pharmaceutical drug packages arriving on the conveyor belts to drop into a transport container, or receptacle, arranged at a filling site. Barrier apparatuses, which prevent certain movements of the pharmaceutical drug packages arriving on the moving conveyor belt, are arranged before the end of each conveyor belt at the dispensing apparatus such that groups of pharmaceutical drug packages accumulate at these barrier devices. A control unit releases the barrier apparatus when all pharmaceutical drug packages of a single order have been collected and a transport container is ready to receive this group of packages at the dispensing apparatus. The group is then conveyed further and finally lands in the correct transport container.